It will never rot so completely that’s its never not salvageable. Imagine some alternate universe that 343 actually hired people who knew what they were doing and they created a new Halo that was as well received and as talked about as much as the first Halo. That shit would fly off the shelves, sure it wont be pre ordered (nobody should ever pre order anyway) but it will sell and sell and sell once word gets out.

This is what the cling to as they try to make a successful game, despite having as much understanding as to what makes a great game as my dog does of planning a manned mission to mars. What happened was they confused the people pre ordering and buying the game off previous quality games for actual talent in game development, so they endlessly try repeating what they did previously and it just works less and less. Meanwhile utter tools add DLC of ever lower value, loot boxes and skins, to squeeze a bit more cash out of those not quite ready to give up on the series.

The problem is that they did not build battery factories quick enough, they sat on their hands waiting for massive hand outs to pay for the factories rather than investing. All while profiting off existing investment in ICE that is high return at this point in its life cycle. So they ended up making more profitable per unit halo models like the F150 that they do not need to sell in high volumes to get a return on.

Batteries are about half the raw cost of an EV, if you paying somebody else to make it for you its going to be more expensive as they will want to make a profit and you are stuck being able to buy ever how many they want to sell you. In practice they have ended up funding a competitor to develop battery tech as well.

Lowering battery cost is the secret to cheap prices, you cannot truly compete until you make your own batteries in high volumes.

Pretty sure he pays cash or close to it rather than a traditional leveraged buy out. He normally only buys struggling or collapsed brands he can get cheap like Wiggle.

Ashley wants two main things out of his purchases, the brand name to slap on a web store with any head start it can give into running a business in that sector, and the retail space. Any decent retail space he wants to flip into residential property while stripping any fixtures and fittings of any value, anything else will be gone or rebooted into the lowest common denominator for that area.

Because the first job of anybody who is responsible for green lighting game development at these huge publishers is to not get fired. Making a game that only just breaks even or even worse makes a loss puts you at risk of getting fired. Even a relatively small game from a large publisher costs a ton to develop and market and has increased risk that nobody will actually buy and play it, at least in the most profitable first few months.

Franchises are so popular with this crowd is because they do not have to worry about name recognition. Hardest thing about getting a brand new title out is just getting people to know it exists and then to be excited about it. Franchises you hardly have to to do any work for that, you know you are going to get press and gamer interest, they sell themselves right up until they release and people get the chance to see if its a house of cards or not.

Its that front loading of sales that they are after, the shops having to buy in stock, idiots who pre order or buy before its clear if the game is broken in someway. Its the most profitable time as the game is at its most expensive, and it enables rapid repayment of the development costs. Games that start slow and have a very long tail of sales do not interest them anywhere near as much as they have already moved onto the next project and already been judged on the initial (under) performance of the game.

But this is a situation of their own making, anybody even remotely cognizant of how Sony and Microsoft entered the market, even Steam has lessons to share, would have been aware that they needed that pipeline of AAAs, and exactly how expensive AAA titles are to make. Its usually public record how much one of the manufacturers paid to buy studios as well, the order of magnitude of cash needed to properly enter the market are hardly secret.

Either they thought they could bully their way into getting them or they thought they didn’t need them, which is even worse, way way worse. They could have spent the money the others are in this space but didn’t, this is the main reason this fell on its arse. They can moan all they like about the price of admission but they could have afforded to pay it if they wanted or lobbied to change it before hand rather than wasting a few billions on this.

It will be very interesting at the level Apple pitch their new gaming service if the rumors are true. Do they go after the mobile lite eco system that Netflix is cobbling together or do they go all in?

But it has always been that way, with first party titles and exclusives , even purchasing studios like Rare or Psygnosis, its not like a brand new situation that developed right after Google announced Stadia.

If Google had done even any research, I would have started by looking at the PS1 launch and how Sony broke into a market then dominated by Nintendo and Sega with their exclusives, they would have secured a multi year pipeline of AAA titles before launch.

This is a mess Google could have completely avoided with some basic research and discussion with the remaining independent studios. Instead they launched and assumed that they could fix this shit later, rather than making an informed decision on if they actually had a real chance.

Not everywhere has this, for example regional France does not, not does regional Japan. Also it’s completely unhelpful to get people out of cars and into public transport without realising that people need to take baby steps towards this. Dictating the end state without having sensible steps to bring people along with the process is just beyond dumb, especially when a lot of countries e.g., the UK have absolutely shit public transport that requires decades of investment.

Ideally with the ability to transport cars and lorrys like LeShuttle.

Yeah this is one of my two problems with Sonys best phones even though I am the exact type of enthusiast they are after; the other being the often slow and confused launch that results in crap and delayed availability. There is zero chance I will ever buy a premium phone (and a grand is premium for me) unless I can trust it has multiple years of updates. Samsung does stuff wrong all the time but at least I know they will support their premium phones for the advertised price.